


Don't get caught up in caution when love exists

by queenofchildren



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Adventure, Airplane Crashes, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Road Trips, Wilderness Survival, idk what else to tag this, no twincest I think, well sort of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-06-04
Packaged: 2020-03-20 13:27:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18993571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofchildren/pseuds/queenofchildren
Summary: What happens when, just before the most important day of your life, you get on a plane with an insufferable stranger only for that plane to crash over the wilderness?What happens when the one person you have to rely on to survive makes you question everything you thought you knew about yourself?Brienne and Jaime are about to find out.(Inspired by the movie "The Mountain Between Us".)





	1. Chapter 1

Brienne doesn't usually reach out to strangers - too often, their reaction is to draw back in shock, or at the very least to stare at her like some monstrous beast. She keeps to herself instead, talking to strangers only if she has to and otherwise sticking to the few people she knows and trusts.

It must be the tiredness or the nerves or the general stress that makes her break that rule now, reaching out to empathise with another person. She couldn't help but overhear that the man in line at the check-in counter next to hers is in the same tight spot she is, desperately hoping to get to King's Landing before the morning. But as the service personnel told her just minutes earlier, there's no chance of that happening. Due to the approaching storm, the entire airport is shut down, and the passengers of the flights cancelled before them have made short work of taking out all the rental cars. There's no way out, and that's exactly what she tells her fellow would-be-passenger when he steps away from the counter and ends up standing next to her, frantically typing on his phone.

“Looks like we're stranded.”

“ _Stranded_?” He makes a face as if she had said something particularly distasteful, and Brienne suppresses a hysterical giggle. But when he looks up at her, his face is cold and disdainful, his green eyes flashing forbiddingly. “Being _stranded_ is what happens to penniless morons like you. It doesn't happen to people like me.”

The giggle dies in her throat, replaced by anger and mortification as he turns back to the counter to badger the poor hostess some more. Brienne stays rooted to the spot for a moment, speechless at his rudeness. She was only trying to commiserate, and got insulted for her trouble.

“People like you”, she mutters under her breath as she stuffs her now useless ticket back into her backpack. “You mean rich assholes who are too full of themselves?”

But of course he doesn't hear her, too busy raging at the woman behind the counter, who is now cowering in fear.

And while Brienne has never been good at witty comebacks, especially not to defend herself, she has also never been good at watching others be bullied. And what that man is doing is bullying, pure and simple.

Two steps get her back to the counter, where she grabs his shoulder and wrenches him around to look at her.

“Will you stop yelling at the woman? She told you there are no other flights. What is she supposed to do, invent teleportation?”

He looks at her now, really looks, whereas before he only glanced at her long enough to dismiss her.

"Aren't you witty." There's that look she's seen a thousand times before, long and measuring, then his face hardens, his mouth curving into a sneer. "Although I guess in your case, you have to be."

She's used to it, or she should be, but it still stings a little bit every time someone mocks her like this, still takes her a second to straighten her spine and arrange her face into steely complacency.

"Just stop being an asshole."

With that, she turns and walks away - even stranded with nothing else to do, her time is too precious for the likes of him.

Except it barely takes half an hour for him to appear at her side again, his sneer replaced by a look of curiosity that has to be her second-least favourite expression.

"So, I have a way out of here."

"Good for you." She pointedly doesn't look up from her phone.

"You can come along, if you want."

There goes her resolve to ignore him - she looks up, surprised, before she's had time to come up with some scathing reply.

"I've rented a small charter plane. I can take you along - you have to get to King's Landing too, right?"

She's about to tell him where he can shove his chartered plane when the mention of King's Landing breaks through her rage, reminding her of what waits for her there – the only thing that matters.

She nods.

"Follow me then."

And she does - if he's her only chance at getting to King's Landing, she has to take it.

He strides ahead of her, and while she could easily catch up with him, Brienne takes the opportunity to watch her soon-to-be travel companion for a moment. She thought he looked vaguely familiar, earlier, but she can't quite place why, and she thinks she's probably imagining it - why on earth would she know someone like him? So far, nothing about him serves to counter her first impression: From his expensive-looking cashmere coat to his confident swagger, the man oozes money and self-importance. The only exceptions to that impression are his shoes – simple, sensible boots rather than the polished dress shoes she'd expect to go with the rest of him, made to stride down marble hallways – and his strange, unprompted offer of a way out. 

"Why are you doing this?" They're halfway across the tarmac by the time it occurs to her to ask, and he seems a little startled to suddenly hear her voice.

“Consider it an apology, for earlier.”

“Earlier?” She's only pretending not to remember, of course – she's not letting him off the hook this easily.

Sadly, the man seems impossible to shame. He only shrugs, decidedly not ashamed of having to recall his insulting words.

“You know, when I called you a penniless moron. That was perhaps a little harsh.”

“ _Perhaps_?”

“Alright, it was out of line. Feel free to stand around and be offended as long as you wish, but I'm getting on that plane.”

For a moment, Brienne considers doing just that. Seeing how he only apologized in the most perfunctory manner before he returned to being rude once more, the prospect of being stuck with him in a flying tin can for several hours isn't exactly appealing – but neither is the thought of staying here and missing the most important day of her life. That isn't just unappealing – it's downright impossible.

Sighing, Brienne follows him into the hangar and up to the smallest, least trustworthy-looking plane she has ever seen. She has to get to King's Landing, and that's that.

Still, she can't resist a little dig of her own as she pushes past her still-nameless companion into the plane, where the pilot is already fiddling around with some controls.

“I'm not chipping in for this, by the way. I am penniless, after all.”

To her surprise, she thinks she sees a smile tug at the corner of his lips, there and gone in an instant before the haughty mask settles over his face again. When he replies, his voice is dripping with sarcasm.

“I think I'll survive footing the bill.”

Yup, definitely true to her first impression: A rich asshole through and through.

It's a five-hour-flight to King's Landing, the pilot informs them as he closes the door and straps himself into his seat.

She can survive five hours with the most irritating man on the planet, if she has to.

But definitely not a single minute more.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Jaime is being an asshole. This is not surprising - he's being an asshole to most people most of the time, on principle and with gusto. The surprising thing is that for once, he actually feels bad about it.

Not _very_ bad - he didn't, like, kick a puppy or anything. But bad enough that the sight of the weird big woman's face crumpling at his rude words has stayed with him through a pointless rant at the airline hostess, through a flurry of annoyed texts from his family and finally through the decision to walk all the way out to the very end of the runway, find the last small plane parked in a ramshackle hangar, and talk a pilot into flying him out.

Which is why she's sitting next to him in this tiny plane now, piloted by a white-haired man who in hindsight seems a little old to be doing this and who insisted on bringing his dog along, and Jaime is wondering what the hell he's doing. Not in relation to the weird woman - that was an odd choice, but he guesses he could chalk it up to a rare instance of benevolence. What's really bothering him is that, for a moment as he walked across the tarmac, he asked himself why the hell he's doing this: Moving heaven and earth, risking to fly through a storm just to be back in King's Landing tomorrow - for what? All that waits for him there is yet another meeting where he feels like he doesn't know exactly what's going on, listens to his sister's barbs and looks at his father's disapproving face and fails to get out of Tyrion what the hell he's missing, only to end the day alone in his too big apartment and feel inexplicably like a failure at life.

It doesn't exactly help that being yelled at for all of ten seconds by a blonde giantess made him feel closer to understanding what the hell is wrong with him than a year's sessions with the therapist Tyrion talked him into seeing.

But all of that feels like dangerously thin ice to venture on, so he settles instead for pondering the giantess in question, easily the most interesting person he's met in some time.

For a while, he's quite content to just sit next to her in silence, occasionally glance over at her out of the corner of his eye and watch her pretend not to notice, but eventually, his ingrained manners win out and tell him that too much time has passed in silence to be considered socially acceptable. Not that he gives much of a damn about „socially acceptable“, these days, but still, some things are hard to shake.

"So, what brings you to Kings Landing in such a hurry?", he finally asks, not bothering to wonder if it's his place. He doesn't usually have to instigate smalltalk – normally, people come up to him to do that all by themselves, always with a favour or advantage in mind.

She looks surprised to be addressed, wary for a moment, and he carefully keeps his features pleasantly neutral. He wonders if the „penniless moron“ made her so suspicious of him, or if she's suspicious of strangers' attention on principle. He wouldn't blame her if she was.

"I have a court date there. Tomorrow."

"You're a lawyer?" She doesn't seem like one - her attire is anything but courtroom-ready, and she seems to be too shy, too awkward for him to imagine her standing up in front of a courtroom full of people to make her case. Although then he remembers her earlier, shielding the hostess at the check-in counter from his ire. She was neither shy nor awkward in that moment, back straight and eyes blazing with righteous fury, and using her impressive stature to good effect. She probably does pro bono work only, or perhaps acts as a state-mandated defense lawyer for people unable to afford their own, like a modern-day knight in defense of the defenseless.

But now, she shakes her head.

"No."

When no more information is forthcoming, Jaime grows irritated. He's the reason she's even on the only plane out of that godforsaken airport - the least she could do is repay him with her tale. And even if he couldn't really care less about her, thinking about the strange woman next to him is better than thinking about... other things.

"What else then?" He gasps theatrically. "You're not on trial, are you? You look way too _good_ to be guilty of anything." He cocks his head to study her, amused by the way she seems to try to duck out of his sight into her seat, the attempt thwarted by her seat belt.

"If you must know, I'm suing the national sports committee."

He looks at her again, and with that additional bit of knowledge, all the puzzle pieces fall together: She's certainly a noticeable creature, taller than him (if not by far, thankfully), broad-shouldered and muscular and really, he should have realised it sooner, if he hadn't been too preoccupied railing at the airline personnel.

“You're that wrestler!”

She nods, but doesn't provide any additional information.

“Of course, I should have realised. A 6-foot-something beast of a woman – how many of you could there possibly be out there?”

He turns towards her in his seat to be better able to study her, pinning her in place with his eyes, and notices her face flush under his gaze. It pleases him more than it should – needling people comes naturally to him, but she's really too easy a target for him.

“You know, the cameras really don't do justice to your eyes.”

The eyes in question widen, only confirming his observation: They're _spectacular_. Blue the colour of the ocean, or the sky before nightfall, or sapphires perhaps.

Then his gaze focuses on the rest of her face again, and he almost shakes his head at his poetic effusions. What's the point of having the most beautiful eyes he's ever seen if they come with a face like _that_?

Individually, he guesses the many little flaws about it wouldn't be so bad – pale skin that turns blotchy when she's agitated, a nose that would most generously be described as “unique”, a mouth too wide for her face and lips too chapped for their fullness to be appealing.

Taking in the whole picture, it's hard not to describe her as anything other than ugly.

Still, ugly or not, it doesn't seem like she deserves what she's going through at the moment.

He remembers hearing about her case for the first time over Sunday brunch, when Cersei brought it up with the delighted tone indicating she'd found some particularly juicy gossip: The story of the woman who didn't know her place. Although of course, that wasn't really the problem: The way he'd understood, she would have been perfectly fine fighting in the women's league, if they'd let her – but then someone had claimed she broke regulations and would have an unfair advantage over her mostly smaller opponents, and she was barred from competing in the women's league. That's when she sued for being allowed to start in matches against men, and was denied yet again.

Tyrion was on her side from the beginning, “out of solidarity with a fellow freak", as he gleefully announced. His father dismissed it as nothing more than a grab for attention. Cersei made it a point to call her "the tart girl", purposefully mispronouncing her name and then seeking out his gaze as if expecting him to be impressed by the clever joke. He wasn't - Jaime thought the whole thing was a joke too, but for different reasons than his father: To him, it seemed like everyone's insistence on keeping her from competing in the men's league was just a sign that they were afraid a girl would beat them.

And she would, probably - he watched some footage of her fights later that day, curious, and was impressed by her determination, quickness, and sheer brute strength. If they let her compete, she'd knock them all on their backs, and they know it.

“Well, you don't need to worry about missing your day in court anymore,” he flashes her a quick, charming smile. “You've found a knight in shining armour to whisk you away, after all."

Her reply is a snort, an ungainly sound to match her awkward exterior.

" _You_?"

Something in her incredulous tone actually manages to scratch at his ego.

"Why not? Plenty of women would love to be whisked away by me." He waggles his eyebrows suggestively and earns himself another snort.

"Yeah? Plenty of women are pretty easy to impress then."

Again that flash of irritation that confuses him - is he seriously annoyed that he failed to charm her? _Her_?

"I guess you're the kind of girl who doesn't want to be wooed, then." He lets his lips curl into a predatory smile and his eyes roam across her form, lingering until he's sure she's aware of it, and waits until she's just nervous enough to start squirming in her seat. "Maybe you'd prefer it if a man would just overpower you, fling you down, take off your clothes..."

Her eyes go wide again, which distracts him for too long from what should be glaringly obvious: What he just said was absolutely unaceptable. Gross, and creepy, and honestly, not even his usual kind of humour, so he has no idea where it came from. But before he can tell her so, she snarls back:

“You couldn't _“fling me down“_ if you tried to.“

She's probably right, considering her stature and athleticism, but he's not going to admit that. Still, he owes her an apology. Again.

“I shouldn't have said that. It was supposed to be a joke but it was inappropriate.”

“Yes it was.”

With that, she turns away from him, back towards the window – a clear dismissal that irks him, again. How on earth is she the one calling the shots in this conversation, let alone deciding when it's over?

“Just for the record though, I absolutely could.”

This at least gets those blue eyes to swivel back towards him, her glare so piercing he thinks he can actually feel it burrow into his chest. She tries to hide her curiosity behind a mask of disdain, but she doesn't quite manage, and he decides to feel flattered.

“You really can't help it, can you? The urge to be an asshole must be too strong.”

She's not entirely off there either, but he has been trying to be nice, and he feels like she really isn't appreciating it enough. 

But before he can point this out, the plane does a sudden lurch, its nose tipping forward momentarily before righting itself again, and both their attention turns to the pilot.

“What's going on?” Jaime calls out, at the same time as the woman asks “Is everything alright?”

“It's alright. We just hit a... hit a... a...” The pilot breaks off again, his head lolling forward, and there's another lurch that has Jaime out of his seat to throw himself forward – something's wrong.

When he leans through the gap between the two front seats, he finds the pilot passed out, his hands limp around the control stick.

On instinct, he grabs it and pulls it back towards him, hoping it will keep the plane from nosediving again, but they're losing height, fast, and his counter-action is barely having any effect.

“Any idea how to fly a plane?”, he calls back to the giantess, but there's no answer, and when he looks back, she's only shaking her head mutely.

Then everything happens very fast: Another jolt, a loud screech, and the back of their plane is literally ripped off.

Even if he knew how, there's no way he's landing that plane now, Jaime realizes, with a reluctance that has to be based on hybris. The woman must come to the same realization at the same time, because she starts tugging at the back of his coat and yelling at him.

"Sit down and strap in."

She's already ahead of him there, strapped into her seat and clutching the dog, and he scrambles to follow her example, bending over to shield his head on his knees, the way he's seen it in countless flight safety demonstrations without ever expecting to apply the knowledge, and all the time they keep falling and falling, icy air whipping around them and howling through the gaping wound that used to be the plane's small cargo hold.

Still, hellish as it is, the fall is preferable to the landing: There's a thud that jars his bones and rattles his teeth and a sudden wave of pain, all-encompassing and yet somehow even sharper in a few specific points, and he'd worry about those in particular but he's already slipping, his body shutting down at the overwhelming hellscape of sensation, and then the world is going dark.

The last clear thought he has before they hit the ground is for Tyrion and the children, the only ones who'll miss him, probably. But the thought before that, oddly enough, is that he never even asked for his travelling companion's name.

And now he's going to die with her.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, this is another very short chapter, and this fic is going along very slowly, but I'm still finding my footing for this ship.  
> Oh, and if anyone reading this happens to have read my Still Star Crossed-fics too - I am aware that Jaime sounds an awful lot like my version of Benvolio, sometimes. I'm still trying to find his voice.

**Author's Note:**

> So, it's probably too early to post this because I've barely planned or written any of it, but I have zero self control and I always need to post everything I start writing immediately. So here it is.   
> Title is from Dermot Kennedy's "Shelter", because every one of his songs makes me want to write super emotional fics immediately.


End file.
